Adding a Color Tint to a Black & White Adjustment Layer in Adobe Photoshop

I’ve got tons of little adjustment layer tips for you to take advantage of in Adobe Photoshop. These are things that you might otherwise overlook, but are in plain sight. I’ll be sprinkling them in between posts here and there, but thought I’d start the process by sharing a tip for creating an interesting look over a black and white image. It’s super easy, so what I write shouldn’t be very long.

In today’s post, I’d like to walk through the very simple process of adding a Black & White adjustment layer to an image in Adobe Photoshop and then describe how to add and edit the color of a tint that will sit on top of the black and white. What I’ll demonstrate will completely alter the look of the photograph, so you can pretty much go for any mood you wish. I’ll purposely keep this post focused on the task at hand because I don’t want to confuse it with any other tips I intend on sharing later on.

Today’s Demo Photo

Let’s see, what would I like to work with today? Hmmm…well, since I think I’ll be adding an orangish tint, I’d like to go with something antiquey or mechanical looking. Ah, I’ve got it. I think some hanging pocket watches would be perfect for what I’d like to show. Check them out.

Adding the Adjustment Layer

Okay, let’s get going. The first thing I’m going to do, since the image is already opened up in Photoshop, is to click on the Black & White icon in the Adjustments panel. Doing this will accomplish three things. It will create the adjustment layer inside the Layers panel, open up the Properties panel and apply the adjustment itself.

As you can see, the image is now black and white.

That’s a job well done, but it doesn’t look like the watches are antiques or convey any sort of a mood. Let’s fix that.

Adding the Tint

Now that I have that finished, I can go ahead with adding the tint to the image. Doing this is very straightforward. To add a tint, I’ll simply click the Tint check box to activate it.

The check box turns the tint feature on and off and the colored square that’s just to the right of it controls the color. If I were to click on that, the Color Picker would open up, where I could choose any color I want. I may make this one just a hair more orange. Let’s take a look at the image now.

Now, typically, adding an overall, solid tint doesn’t really make the image look very good. The tint needs to have some definition to it, so the image conveys emotion. Let’s see what I can do with two different adjustments.

Pushing the Black & White Sliders

Since I haven’t added any definition to this image yet, I think I’ll take this time to do so. To accomplish this, I’ll push each color slider in the Properties panel to the left and to the right, to see the desired effect. I could also use the Targeted Adjustment Tool to help out in this regard, since it’s sometimes a challenge to see (or remember) which color is which. The Targeted Adjustment Tool sits just to the left of the Tint check box. To use it, I would click on it to activate it and then move over and click and drag anywhere on the image. As I did that, I’d see the appropriate slider move for whichever color I happened to be clicking and dragging on. Here are the sliders after I made a few adjustments.

Let’s take a look at the image now.

That’s looking pretty good.

Changing Opacity & Applying a Blending Mode

I could stick with what I currently have, if that was the look I was going for. If I wanted to lessen the effect of the adjustment layer a bit, I could head into the Layers panel and reduce the opacity somewhat. To do that, I’d click on the Opacity feature and push the slider to the left.

Here’s the image with the opacity reduced to 80%. I actually like this version a lot.

Also, if I wanted to, I could apply a blending mode alone or combine a blending mode with an opacity reduction. Just for fun, I kept the opacity at 80% and then applied the Multiply blending mode.

This version has an eerie look about it. Now that’s got emotion.

This one might be my new favorite.

As you can see, there are tons of options when it comes to applying tints and other effects in Adobe Photoshop. The sky’s the limit when it comes to this. I do hope I clearly explained how to go about applying a Black & White adjustment layer as well as how to use the Tint feature therein. If you have any questions regarding this post, please let me know in the comment section down below. You’re also welcome to ask any question you wish in the new discussion forum. Thanks for reading!